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1919 Centenary or 100 Years Ago in the Movies

It’s 1919, 100 years ago this year. The U.S. President is Woodrow Wilson. The world population is about 4.4 billion. The cost of a first-class stamp rises mid-year from 2¢ to 3¢. Two pounds of roast beef costs about 38¢ and the most popular work of fiction is The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction goes to Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons. Former President, Theodore Roosevelt dies in his sleep at the age of 60 in January and the Influenza Pandemic rages on, killing more people in one year than during the four years of the black plague.

1919 is the year during which Major League Baseball suffers the worst scandal in the game’s history when nine players from the Chicago White Sox throw the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. In a positive baseball light, 1919 is the year when Babe Ruth is sold by the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees for $125,000, the largest sum ever paid for a player at that time. The deal was announced on January 6, 1920.

The year sees the end of World War I with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. The US Congress approves the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guaranteed voting for women, and sent it to the individual states for ratification. January of that year also brings the ratification of the 18th Amendment to take effect the following year.

Dial telephones were introduced by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1919. Numerous important Broadway shows opened that year. You can take a look at the list at Broadway World. And then there were movies by what was by that time a robust industry. Here’s to them and the players who made them possible.

Movie Happenings

Charlie Chaplin begins work on The Kid, his first feature film. His co-star will be four-year-old Jackie Coogan.

The Barney Google cartoon strip, by Billy DeBeck, premiered. Originally Take Barney Google, F’rinstance, Barney was later joined by Snuffy smith.

Harold Lloyd suffered a serious accident while taking some publicity photos for his new series of two-reelers. He lit what he thought was a prop fuse bomb and posed with it when it went off. The accident resulted in his losing a thumb and index finger. Lloyd returned to the screen, however, as one of film history’s most daring actors.

United Artists’ first feature film, the comedy His Majesty, the American, premiered. Directed by Joseph Henabery the film starred one of the studio’s founders, Douglas Fairbanks.

Walt Disney teamed with Ub Iwerks to form Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists (later known as Ub Iwerks), to create cartoon animations.

Max and Dave Fleischer‘s Out of the Inkwell series premiered, introducing KoKo the Clown, one of the first animated characters.